"Two Years"
Before my pen hits the page I can see the words
Endlessly profound English morsels
Tumbling into clumsy lines in my head
Organizing themselves into delicate metaphors, crafting the perfect imagery
To expel my point from my unconscious
Then the pen
And the translation's gone wrong
Not quite the imagery I saw
Not quite the sentences that were carefully queuing up in their orderly lines
So much like waking from a dream and trying to remember
It dissolves from the fertile realm where it exists the moment I try to focus on it,
Cast out into the light where it shrivels and becomes almost unrecognizable,
A parched husk of a thought that if touched will evaporate.
How do I describe what this failure feels like?
Or this pain and regret, this guilt... this crushing motherly guilt
From all the moments stolen from us by my own illness
And the relentless pursuit of time.
How do I describe the brutality of hindsight's boiling clarity
That I've been steeping in for two years?
What have these past two years been?
I'm on a long hike through familiar surroundings
No joyful discoveries, no novelty
New trails, new location, same gear, same me
Nothing to see but my own feet
Drudgery
When I look up to try and orient myself it's just more trees
Endless trees shading me and blocking the next bend ahead
I look back to my feet, the dirt, and the roaring dead leaves
My legs burn and cramp and ache at times
But I can't leave without pushing through
There's nothing else I can do
No cell signal, no help, no map,
Just me
I have to be almost free, right?
I can't hike much longer than this, can I?
It doesn't matter what thoughts or questions plunge through my mind
None of the fatigue or the pain changes the path or shortens my journey
None of my wants or needs will propel me forward
All I can do is keep walking, stepping, hiking, trudging, stumbling, falling
Closer to whatever lies at the end of this.
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